On a Bookshelf Near You

You occasionally hear someone say, "After all, life doesn't come with an instruction book." It's a declaration offered as an excuse for some notable human failure. There was a time in my wayward youth when this philosophy appealed to me as a loophole of sorts to explain my own foolish missteps. My ego likes to think it can learn enough from past mistakes to choreograph my future course through life just fine, thank you very much.

But there's a big problem with this cheeky quip because life does indeed come with a manual. And it's chock-full of clear-cut advice for every imaginable moral and practical dilemma encountered by we humans in our earthly pilgrimage.

I'll admit it's rather tiresome for many away-from-home college students to be reminded that excessive alcohol consumption and experimentation with illegal drugs are transgressions against body and soul. And the philandering spouse who has rationalized that the affair was their partner's fault doesn't want to hear that there's a much higher authority than their own conscience, One who condemns their actions.

Indeed, the way of the world seems so to offer so much freedom, so much carnal pleasure, such an easy path. Until…

Until natural consequences flare up, and the singeing heat of a conscience weary from decades of denial brings us to our knees.

Until abusing our bodies by overindulgence leaves us with painful health consequences that no amount of medical marijuana can mask.

Until we see our children reject the patterns we have modeled for them.

Maybe the stubborn notion that we can chart our own route through life is why mankind has always been fascinated with the idea of immortality, as in living in the flesh forever. After all, God did "…set eternity in the human heart" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). If we could just live for hundreds of years instead of 80 or 90, perhaps we could figure it all out and find our way to the peace we crave.

Yet there sits that neglected instruction book on many an American household's bookshelf. If it's too heavy to get through, there are scores of easily understood, reliable distillations of its wisdom—just a computer click away. And, of course, there is always the conveniently condensed list of God's Ten Dos and Don'ts.

I challenge anyone to come up with a personal or societal problem, large or small, that could not be avoided or resolved if only His Wisdom weren't relegated to the antique book category, along with the 1880's Guide to the Manners, Etiquette, and Deportment of the Most Refined Society.

The Lord has provided the ultimate handbook to living large, loving large, and opening our eyes to beauty, our hearts to serenity, our minds to the miraculous and indescribable.

Simply the Bible. Who knew?